Knee Pain Relief Techniques – Crushing the Rectus Femoris

Happy Tuesday!

For this weeks tutorial, I have decided to put up one of my newer Myofascial Release discoveries. I have been spending a great deal of time in the lab and have been fortunate enough to develop a substantial amount of techniques to improve human performance. The discoveries have been popping up left and right and the techniques are becoming more effective.

In the video above I cover a great technique to help with knee pain. Knee pain is a common issue I have found in my career and it has been a major barrier in getting back into functionality. Although it isn’t always the case, Myofascial Release can be the best fix for addressing knee pain. In this video I cover a muscle that carries a great influence on knee pain. The Rectus Femoris is a muscle commonly tightened on most people as a result of being seating for extended periods of time. Since the Rectus Femoris is a hip flexor as well as a knee extensor, being seated will have a great influence on it. Because the Rectus Femoris attaches to the knee, it will be directly restrictive upon knee flexion, creating a possibility of knee pain whenever you run or go into a squat position. Most people I have ever met who have had knee problems have also had excessive tightness in their Rectus Femoris.

I will say that the technique above will not address the issue and that knee pains are usually a result of a poorly integrated body. I strongly recommend getting on an extensive corrective muscular structural integration program to address the root of why a knee pain might exist.

Stretch intentionally, not habitually,

Naudi

Transcript:

Hey, guys. It’s Naudi Aguilar at Functional Patterns and for today’s video tutorial, I’m going to be helping you improve knee function via the release of the rectus femoris. Now the rectus femoris generally tends to be very restrictive on the patella. Specifically speaking, when it gets really tight and you try bending your knee, what it’ll actually end up doing is actually pulling on that patella in an upward fashion. We want to be very watchful of trying to get those quadriceps nice and flexible on the front side.

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Right now we’re going to be focusing on releasing the rectus femoris. The tools of use that we’re going to be needing, for one I’m going to be utilizing a Muay Thai pad, because it’s just available for me. I’m going to be utilizing a barbell, so if you are at a gym that’s probably where you will be able to do this technique. I’m going to use a kettlebell for weight. I don’t want to have plates. The only plates I have are 45s and 25s. I don’t have any 10s or anything lighter, so I just grab one of my kettlebells and I put it on here.

What I’m just going to do is sit myself nice and flat right here to a wall.

Then from there I’m going to bring this pad right here underneath my knee, just to give me some support. I’m looking to give myself a nice support structure here so that way I don’t wind up hyperextending the knee when I end up putting the bar over the top of this. From there, what I end up doing is I just grab the bar and I just let it sit over the top of it.

What I like about utilizing this barbell here is that I don’t have to do anything. I’m pretty much just sitting here. The barbell’s doing all the work for me, really. Typically when you end up having to release a quadricep, you’ll have to be kind of in a plank position, holding your body weight up as you’re releasing the quads. Here, you don’t have to hold anything up. You’re kind of just relaxing.

If I want to add more weight, what I can also do is actually just move this over and that’s actually going to put more of the bar onto my legs.

You’ll see that there’s actually more weight on from the bar over here, so one thing you can do is actually scoot it over. If you find that this is not giving you any kind of a release, what you can then do is then grab a weight and throw it directly on and that’ll add significantly more.

You should be able to find some spots in there. For me, I’m a little more conditioned into this, so this isn’t really going to create too much pain anymore because my body’s kind of accustomed to it. But man, when I first started it was pretty bad, so just be very watchful that you’re not putting too much weight initially. Kind of let your body rest into it and if you feel that you need to get that progressive tension on there, you can just start throwing on some more weight.

From there I can just switch the sides. I’ll just take this thing off. I’ll sit step over, have this one underneath my knee. I’ll bring this bad boy on, then get it onto my right leg. I’ll try squeezing this leg out, then bringing it over the top like so.

One area that I tend to find a lot of tension on for most people in general when it does happen to influence the knee is going to be right here, closest to the knee, simply because this region generally tends to stabilize at the knee. What ends up happening, when you end up having a lot of dysfunctional articulations happening in the pelvis, what ends up happening it’s almost like a rattling in the knee itself. When you send that shockwave down the knee, what ends up happening is a bunch of small micro contractions to try and stabilize the joint itself. Oftentimes, what’ll tend to get really tight are these muscles right here by the knee, and you’ll feel a significant amount of pressure in that region specifically.

You can also work all the way up into the upper portion of the rectus femoris. For those of you who have really tight hip flexors from having office jobs, that’ll generally be another area where you’ll wind up feeling a significant amount of tension.

There’s the myofascial release technique for you. Hope you guys enjoyed that. If you are in a gym, it’s probably going to be a better one to utilize it at unless you have some barbells at home and some weights. Like I said, it’s a great technique. It doesn’t require a lot of effort on your part. You kind of just let the barbell do the work itself. I myself am finding that the lazier I am during a myofascial release technique, the better it is because at that point I’m engaging less muscles which, in turn, allows me to relax further making the technique even more effective because now a relaxed muscle is one that’s going to be more inclined towards being released and elongated.

I hope you guys liked that video. Please like and share it, favorite it. Anything you guys can do to help me out. I’m always appreciative of that kind of stuff. I do work really hard to try to get this content up there and anything you guys can do to help me out, I really do appreciate that.

If you guys would like more information, I would recommend subscribing to my YouTube channel or visiting my website at functionalpatterns.com. You can browse through the gallery of information I have put forth for you guys, so you guys can see how you functionally operate with your body.

This is Naudi Aguilar reminding you to stretch intentionally and not habitually. Take care.

2 Comments

how long does it take before the pain through whole leg, as weight sits on tense areas to dissipate? how long did you do this before you were able to add the weight? around my knee and all the way up my thigh throbs with knots as I work the barbell up it.

Will try this. Do you think it could help with my sciatic pain I had surgery for spinal stenosis on the L4 back pain is gone but my right leg is still weak and I get some mild pain still in that leg had surgery in August 2016 Thanks for what you are doing